This essay introduces two discoveries in the realm of O'Neill history: the 1929 marriage certificate of Eugene O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey, and a letter from the internationally acclaimed Irish playwright Sean O'Casey to O'Neill on the occasion of the latter's receipt of the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature. The marriage certificate's details have been previously made available to the scholarly community in the Louis Sheaffer archives at Connecticut College, but never before has a copy of the document been published. The O'Casey letter is a new discovery. There is no published mention of the letter, which remained undiscovered until mid-March 2019, when I found it quite by accident in a file of the O'Neill Papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale University. The letter had been placed in the wrong file, which probably explains why it had gone unnoticed by O'Neill biographers and scholars.The storied marriage of Gene and Carlotta began on July 22, 1929, a Monday, at 10:45 in the morning, at the conclusion of their civil wedding ceremony when they signed the certificate before two witnesses and the officier de l'état civil at the 1st arrondissement Mairie in Paris. By the time of the wedding, they had been outside of the United States, traveling and residing abroad together for about a year and a half. They had eloped on February 10, 1928, boarding the SS Berengaria in New York, which took them across the Atlantic to London and eventually to France. They checked in to the Hotel du Rhin on the Place Vendôme on February 26, 1928, a favorite spot of Carlotta's in Paris.1 For O'Neill, other than brief moments ashore, mainly along the docks of Southampton, Cherbourg, and Liverpool during his seafaring days, this was his first sojourn to Europe. They quickly headed down to the southwest of France to take up residence for a few months in Biarritz, where they enjoyed the coast and from which they made a few brief forays to the French Riviera and Spain (WD, 1.54–58). Fulfilling a long-sought dream of O'Neill's, they then traveled to Asia.The trip tested the new couple's relationship, as O'Neill hit Carlotta after a night of heavy drinking in Shanghai. She summarily left him. A week later they resolved the situation, but on their voyage back to Europe, he went off on a two-day drinking binge with a fellow passenger. She left again, and he proceeded to pursue her across the Red Sea. Their exchange of telegrams, ship to ship, finally resolved the fight; and they met up at Port Said, resolving to maintain a peaceful, nonviolent, and sober relationship.2They then tried their hand at French Riviera life, when they rented a villa in Cap D'Ail, a small seaside village just beside the Principality of Monaco, on the Cote d'Azur. By 1929 it already had a reputation as a high-class resort town frequented by celebrities, including the French founders of film, the Lumière brothers, and the Russian-born stage and screen star Sacha Guitry.3 At the Villa Les Mimosas, a stone's throw from the beautiful Mediterranean, O'Neill put the final touches on his play Dynamo—the only one of his plays performed during his lifetime for which he did not attend rehearsals—while Carlotta took to hiring cooks and house cleaners, creating a stable environment for O'Neill to work in. In his new work room, he soon settled on the title for his next play: Mourning Becomes Electra (WD, 1.70).Perhaps it was the unseasonably cold and inclement weather, or maybe the proximity to Monte Carlo and its beckoning casinos (O'Neill revealed to his lawyer Harry Weinberger a few months later that he had developed a bad gambling habit while he was in Asia), or it might have been the hubbub of a tourist-oriented town that seemed counterproductive to a regimen of writing.4 In any case, in mid-April 1929, Carlotta and Gene went house-hunting in Brittany and the Lorraine, eventually deciding on a home in the Loire Valley (WD, 1.68).A chateau, actually. On June 1, 1929, they signed a three-year lease for the Chateau du Plessis (“Le Plessis”) located north of Tours, in Saint Antoine du Rocher (WD, 1.70). They brought with them the cooks and housekeepers from Villa Les Mimosas and began the process of turning this thirty-five-room mansion into a home and a workspace. O'Neill at first was put off by the size and high-class trappings of the chateau, but he soon warmed to it and was especially excited about the construction of a new pool that was completed within the first month of their residence.5 Still smarting from the overwhelmingly negative critical response to Dynamo, which had premiered in New York in February, O'Neill nevertheless pushed on, turning to Mourning Becomes Electra, which he would complete during their two-year stay at Le Plessis.On July 3 O'Neill received a cable from his lawyer in New York that his divorce from his second wife, Agnes Boulton, had finally been executed in Reno (WD, 1.71). The divorce process had been ugly, protracted, and public. Carlotta wrote in her diary on July 3, 1929: “We can't believe this torture of 18 months is over! That we are no longer at the mercy of such a person!” And over the next two days, she noted that the New York Herald and other papers had covered the divorce; “that phase is dead!” she exulted, with due emphasis.6 O'Neill wrote tersely but enthusiastically in his work diary: “Cable that divorce granted Reno yesterday! At last, thank God! Cheers!” (WD, 1.71).Within a day, Carlotta contacted her lawyer, Joseph Du Vivier, to handle the legal arrangements for their wedding. And by the end of the week, she and O'Neill journeyed to Paris, to the Hotel du Rhin, for a prearranged dentist appointment for Gene and later to meet up with George Jean Nathan and his wife for dinner. On July 10 Eugene and Carlotta met with Du Vivier at 11 a.m. in his office on Boulevard Haussmann “to discuss marriage arrangements,” as Carlotta noted in her diary, adding that “[Du Vivier] thinks the premier Arrondissement is best, having this hotel as residence.”7The following day, July 11, Carlotta wrote: “Ask manager of du Rhin to give us papers of domicile which he graciously does. We go to Du Vivier's office + he with us to Consul General where papers are signed + sealed.” After the trip to the American Consul General and the execution of the marriage contract, the couple “motor[ed] back to Plessis.”8These diary entries note two critical events in the legal proceeding for a marriage under the civil law of France: the proof of domicile within the district where the marriage will take place, and the execution of a marriage contract prior to the wedding ceremony. For foreigners, or étrangères, the marriage contract was a requirement, and it had to be authenticated by the country of origin of the two spouses; thus the trip to the Consul General's office by the couple and their lawyer. The marriage contract was executed by the actual Consul General of the United States in Paris, Alphonse Gaulin. All this was pro forma for a French wedding by American citizens.The obtaining of the “papers of domicile” from the hotel manager, however, requires some scrutiny. Under the Civil Code of France, which had been enacted in 1803 and was still in force at the time of the O'Neills' nuptials, at least one of the two spouses is required to “have his domicile or residence established by at least one month of continuous residence” in the municipality, or in this case, arrondissement, where the wedding celebration will take place.9The hotel manager evidently filled out and signed a document that stated that Eugene O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey, or either one of them, had resided at the Hotel Du Rhin for the requisite period. In fact, they had only been at the hotel for a few days. Perhaps Carlotta's note that the manager “graciously” acceded to her request is her own cryptic way of saying that he falsified the document for their benefit, in order to speed up the process. The fact that she, the day after the wedding ceremony, gave him a gift of a silver watch lighter from Dunhill is some evidence of a potential payoff for the favor. In any event, this was probably a case of “no harm, no foul” in Carlotta's mind, since they had indeed been residing in France for a period exceeding thirty days. They just had not been living in the 1st arrondissement, or anywhere in Paris, for that long.If there were some kind of hanky-panky regarding the domicile or residence documentation, O'Neill was clearly not aware of it, and he seemed to think things were proceeding according to Hoyle. He wrote to Weinberger on July 13: I returned from Paris on the 11th. We had been up there having a lawyer fix up all the technicalities of our marriage and getting us duly wedded according to French law. All is now set and everything waits on the arrival of the certified decree. The lawyer is arranging it skillfully so that there will be no chance of publicity until after the event—whenever we chance to arrange it.10 Attracting publicity—in particular, being hounded by the tabloid press of the day—was of major concern to O'Neill throughout his time abroad. After the elopement in early 1928, the couple was chased by reporters in London and as far as the Far East. By 1929 the press had been thrown off the scent, and O'Neill was especially careful to keep his whereabouts known only to a few close friends and associates. In a letter to his first biographer, Barrett Clark, on June 29, 1929, O'Neill identified the new address on his stationary—Le Plessis, Saint-Antoine du Rocher, Indre et Loire—as his “permanent address for the next years” and advised Clark to “keep it much under your hat and make no exception to this rule.”11The desire to avoid publicity perhaps explains why Eugene and Carlotta were married in Paris instead of in the Mairie of Saint-Antoine du Rocher. As noted, the Parisian lawyer succeeded in keeping the ceremony out of the papers. But perhaps another motive was to make sure that their actual residence at the Chateau du Plessis was not revealed. By getting married in Paris, they did not risk tipping the press to their actual address. Once news of the wedding and its location became known, the marriage certificate, including the address of the couple, could be accessed easily enough from the public record. All this helps explain the decision to get married in the capital. One other simple explanation was that Carlotta preferred a Paris wedding over a provincial proceeding.On July 17 Carlotta received a letter from Du Vivier, and she wrote in her diary “that all is in order (heavenly words) + to be in Paris Monday morning for final signing of the contract!!” On July 19 she received a wire from Du Vivier and wrote: “Nothing matters! Gene tells me that he loves me!” The next day, she affirmed that Du Vivier had wired assurance that the ceremony had been “arranged for 10:30 Monday morning.” Carlotta declared, “I tremble when I hear this—can that mean—really, that this 18 months of humiliation, embarrassment + heart-ache is over!”12Although neither she nor O'Neill makes any mention of this in their respective diaries or correspondence, the length of the interval between the execution of the marriage contract on July 10 and the wedding twelve days later is significant: according to a Napoleonic-era law still in force in 1929, a notice of an impending wedding must be affixed to the door of the “common house” or Mairie and remain there for no fewer than ten days prior to the ceremony.13Over that weekend, the two lovers took time to commune with each other in anticipation of their impending nuptials. “Beautiful night—a full golden moon. Gene talks to me very sweetly + very seriously of our marriage—it is to be for each of us until death! Thank God!” On Sunday, Gene wrote letters and took a swim in the pool.14 In a letter to Weinberger he wrote, “Carlotta and I expect to be married in Paris tomorrow. Our French lawyer has arranged matters so that I won't have to wait to show them the decree after all—he has convinced them I'm not a bigamist without it! I'll send you a cable when it's all over.”15 They left Chateau du Plessis at 5:00 p.m. and arrived at the Hotel du Rhin five hours later. “I am ill with nerves, heat, excitement and — love!,” Carlotta wrote on the night before the wedding; “Gene takes me in hand!”16The next morning Du Vivier called on them at the hotel and escorted them several blocks away to the Mairie du Premier Arrondissement (located across the street from the Louvre) where they were married. “Although a Civil Ceremony, it was quite impressive,” Carlotta wrote in her journal later that night.17 O'Neill was equally impressed. In a letter to Weinberger two days later, he wrote: The marriage in Paris was a “huge success!” Although a civil ceremony it was not the buying a dog-license variety they serve one in the States but really impressive. The French know how to give a genuine meaning to things like that. At any rate, it went over big with Carlotta and we feel tremendously relieved and at peace as a result. No one will ever know all the damn petty humiliations we have had to put up with in this past year and a half. Thank God, that's over!18 A wedding ceremony under French civil law is indeed an impressive occasion, even more so at the 1st arrondissement in Paris. Paris is divided into twenty arrondissement, or districts, that handle the governmental affairs of all its inhabitants. In each arrondissement, there is a Mairie, equivalent to the American city hall. The Mairie for the 1st arrondissement, which stands beside the eleventh-and twelfth-century église Saint-Germain L'Auxerrois, was originally constructed beginning in 1857. The architect made an eclectic choice in his combination of three architectural periods evoked in the façade: Haussmann, Gothic, and French Renaissance. In the 1880s the Mairie was expanded, and the interior of the building, including the Salle des Mariages, was decorated with exquisite murals by the painter-decorator Pierre-Albert Besnard, already famous for his décor of the cupola of the Petit Palais, the ceiling of the Comédie-Française, and the chemistry amphitheater of the Sorbonne.19Upon entering the Premier Mairie, members of a wedding party are given private access to L'Escalier D'Honneur (the staircase of honor), a truly magnificent spiral stairwell that leads up to the second floor (see fig. 1). During the ordinary doings of the day in the Mairie, the iron gate near the base of the staircase is shut. During weddings and other ceremonial occasions in the Mairie, the gate is swung open. Spouses and families who ascend the stairwell come upon an antechamber whose main architectural feature is a window that looks out on the Louvre. They await there the hour of the ceremony, and then the doors of the Salle des Mariages are opened, and friends and family are permitted to enter the ornate rectangular room. Coming into the space, they see a fireplace on the left framed by two massive caryatides and, above it, one of Besnard's murals, in a demi-lune alcove, entitled L'Été ou Le Milieu de la Vie (Summer or The Middle of Life). Next they encounter la rosace monumentale, the giant rose window that adorns the entire right side of the room, the architectural flourish at the center of the building's street-front façade. Benches are arranged on either side of the room, facing the front of the room where a desk for the officials is located. An arch behind the desk is capped with the words “Code Civil,” over which lies another mural in a demi-lune. This one is a dour image entitled L'Hiver ou Le Soir de la Vie (Winter or The Night of Life). Another mural adorns the door that was the entrance of the engaged and the exit of the newlyweds: Le Printemps ou Le Matin de la Vie (Spring or The Morning of Life) (see fig. 2).20Perhaps the newlyweds were reflecting on the architecture and the manner in which the wedding participants are brought through the elaborately decorated civic spaces. But perhaps they were also remarking on the protocol of the ceremony itself: a process that has been replicated by French citizens, in various forms, since the French Revolution. On August 27, 1791, the National Assembly of France adopted, as Article 7, Title II of the Constitution of 1791, the revolutionary statement that “the law considers marriage only as a civil contract.” Suzanne Desan notes that laws affecting marriage, divorce, and family were thereafter enacted in 1792 that “legalized divorce, reduced paternal authority over marriage choices, lowered the age of majority [from 25 to 21], removed all nuptial matters from clerical control, and established a secular état civil for recording births, marriages, divorces, and deaths.”21 Indeed, the marriage certificate below is a product of that “état civil.”22 Desan continues, “these decrees distinctly recast the nature of marriage in France. With the passage of these laws, the deputies attempted to situate marriage as a secular civil contract, voluntarily agreed upon by two individuals acting freely.”23The creation of civil marriage was its own act of defiance against the ancien regime that for centuries denied the people, the citizens of France, fair and equal treatment under the law. The ability to marry had long been controlled by a system of feudal property law and controlled by a Roman Catholic clergy that authorized parents to sell their children and claimed the right to impose its own rules and financial charges on the marriage service.So when the officials of a Mairie in France conduct a civil marriage ceremony, they do so with a certain reverence for the rule of law, its history and purpose, that they are perpetuating in the very act of their officiation. Perhaps it is this serious treatment of the ritual that so impressed Gene and Carlotta. It begins, as do most weddings, with the entrance of the bride and groom into the wedding chamber. In the civil ceremony, they stand facing the front of the room before three officials of the Mairie. The lead official then proceeds to share a few words about the couple, if they know them. If not, they proceed to the reading of the relevant civil law statutes.24 The laws enacted during the Revolution regarding marriage and familial relations were eventually codified in March 1804, during the Napoleonic era, in the Code civil des Francais. Desan reports that this document “consisted of 2,281 articles of civil law, unified into three books governing Persons, Property, and Means of Acquiring Property.” “In much modified form,” she observes, “the Civil Code continues to operate in France today.”25In the ceremony, the couple is informed of their responsibilities, under the Civil Law, to each other and to their offspring, for the duration of their communion as spouses. Back in 1929 the O'Neills would have heard a reading of the “obligations qui naissent du mariage”—the obligations that arise from marriage, that would include “l'obligation de nourrir, entretenir et élever leurs enfants”—the obligation to feed, maintain, and raise the children.26The civil officer then asks if both parties consent to the marriage. They must each express their consent vocally. Again, this is similar to the “I do” portion of many other wedding ceremonies. The spouses, two witnesses, and the lead civil official then proceed to sign the marriage certificate, which is the actual official record of the marriage.27On July 22, 1929, Eugene Gladstone O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey signed the document that appears below. The information recorded in it was assembled by their lawyer, Du Vivier, over the course of a fortnight before the wedding ceremony. In addition to recording their residence at the Hotel du Rhin, it notes Eugene's domicile as being in New York, not in Bermuda at Spithead, his actual residence prior to his departure for France. Interestingly, the address that O'Neill provided, 245 West Fifty-Second Street, was that of the Guild Theatre (recently renamed the August Wilson Theatre).28 Carlotta listed her New York lawyer's office, 25 West Forty-Third Street, as her home address. The information about their parents and birthplace is accurate, with one exception: Carlotta's father is listed as “propriétaire domicilie à Navota Californie,” a homeowner in “Navota” California.29 Perhaps in his haste to put the information together, Du Vivier misheard or mistyped the name of the town, Novato. Carlotta is “sans profession,” or without a profession, while Gene is identified as an “artiste dramatique” a dramatic artist, instead of the more accurate “auteur de dramatique,” or playwright.The document notes the marriage contract that was executed on July 11, 1929, by Gaulin, the American Consul General, and it identifies the “Officier de l'état civil du premier arrondissement de Paris,” Pierre Louis Adolphe Bertrand. Indeed, Bertrand was the Mairie-Adjoint, or deputy mayor of the arrondissement. And the certificate notes that the two witnesses were Du Vivier, identified as “avocat de la Cour supreme des Etats Unis,” and Charles Eugene Ronsseray, identified as “administrateur de sociétés.” Both Ronsseray and Du Vivier are listed with the same address, 35 Boulevard Haussmann. Perhaps Ronsseray worked in Du Vivier's law office. In light of the fact that confidentiality was of utmost importance to the O'Neills, the use of a fellow lawyer, or law clerk in Du Vivier's law practice, makes sense. The marriage document was included in a large book that lay open during the service and, as noted, was signed by all of the participants in the civil law ceremony at the end of the proceeding. The book remained at the Mairie, continuing to include other marriage certificates for other individuals fortunate enough to get married in the 1st arrondissement of Paris that year. Eventually, the book was stored in the Archives de Paris.In 1959 the biographer Louis Sheaffer worked with a researcher in France, Michelle Weiller (apparently a Ph.D. candidate), who tracked down the certificate and passed on to Sheaffer the essential information, including the location of the ceremony, the marriage contract, and the identities of the witnesses. On November 19, 1959, Sheaffer responded to Weiller's report of her research (not found in the files): To start with your letter which came today, I agree with you that Charles Ronsseray probably remembers things but doesn't want to talk. (This is an old story in my research —either they're all too professionally ethical or else Carlotta bought them out with her generosity or else, even at this late date, they remember that “elle est formidable” and feel that silence is the better part of valor.) Anyhow, I never give up immediately. What does Ronsseray do, what sort of work, etc. Just a remote chance but hope that possibly something you've learned about him might give me some idea as to how he could be moved to talk. Final item about M. Ronsseray: if you can't learn anything productive about him, let me have his address. After three years and writing 3,000 or more letters, I can sometimes get across to people the assurance that I'm trustworthy, won't quote 'em or even mention their names, that I'm engaged on a serious project, and so forth. Just probably a letter from U.S. might soften him a bit.30 Weiller's report suggests that she had made no contact with the attorney Du Vivier. “Is Joseph Du Vivier dead?,” Sheaffer asked her; “what of Pierre Louis Adolphe Bertrand, who performed the marriage ceremony, a civil official in the 1st arrondissement? … Still living?”31Unfortunately, Weiller's and Sheaffer's persistent efforts to get more information from Ronsseray and about Du Vivier and Bertrand seem to have been unfruitful. This I infer from the fact that Sheaffer left out any mention of them or any details of the O'Neills' marriage certificate in O'Neill: Son and Artist. Other biographers, including Arthur and Barbara Gelb, Stephen A. Black, and Robert M. Dowling, also make no mention of the witnesses's names.My discovery of the marriage certificate came about as a result of an internet search in May 2019. I am working on a new book about O'Neill called A Playwright's Journey that McFarland will publish in 2021. I knew that I would be in France during the summer of 2019, teaching an education abroad course for the University of Kentucky; I decided that after the spring semester ended, I would do some advance work in that country. I figured that the use of Google.fr would speed my search through French archives. And indeed after a few clicks and scrolls, I found the website for the 1st arrondissement of Paris and was given access to a portal to request a copy of the marriage certificate of Eugene O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey. I knew the date of the wedding and their complete names, and with that I completed the online request. Within a day, I received an electronic response from the Archives de Paris informing me that they had retrieved the document and would send me a copy by regular mail. A week later I received a copy of the marriage certificate that is transcribed and translated below.32While I was in Paris in July and August 2019, ninety years after the O'Neills were married, I made two trips to the Mairie of the 1st arrondissement. Thanks to some persistence, reminiscent of our friend Louis Sheaffer, I made my way up (via a public stairwell) to the Salle des Mariages where, courtesy of a very helpful clerk, I gained access to the chamber and was allowed an opportunity to take pictures of that ornate space. A brochure that the guide gave me describes the history and architecture of the Mairie, including the interior, L'Escalier D'Honneur, and the Salle des Mariages. Also of great value was the guide's detailed description of the journey of the wedding party up the stairs, to the antechamber, and into the chamber for the ceremony. Additionally, he provided me with a list of the civil laws that are recited during the ceremony. Clerks in the administrative office provided a collection of materials that are given to all candidates for marriage, as well as brief descriptions of the pertinent protocols.After the wedding, Gene and Carlotta went back to the American Consulate, where Carlotta had her new name put on her passport, then to a bank to change the name on her account. They then returned to the Hotel du Rhin to send out cables announcing the marriage and to have lunch together. Carlotta concluded her description of the day with the cryptic statement: “we are completely flat with exhaustion for ‘let down’ which is natural!”33 Years later, she would elaborate, describing to Sheaffer her disappointment about the night of their honeymoon. “When we got back to the hotel … he said, ‘I'm exhausted, I'm going to bed,’ and I told him, ‘So am I.’ So off he went to his bedroom and I went to mine—we always had separate bedrooms—and that was my wedding night.”34The next day they went to Cartier, where Gene bought Carlotta a sapphire ring. She never had an engagement ring.35 And Carlotta bought the wedding rings that Sheaffer would later describe as being inscribed with a quotation from Lazarus Laughed: “‘I am your laughter’ (in O'Neill's ring to her), ‘And you are mine’ (in her ring to him).”36 They also shopped at Dunhill, where Carlotta ordered a gold lighter for Gene and purchased the “silver watch lighter for [the] manager of duRhin [sic].” Later that day they motored back to Plessis, arriving at 10:45 p.m., during what Carlotta described as a “terrible rain and thunder storm.” Carlotta concluded her diary entry: “Mr. + Mrs. Eugene O'Neill—At home!”37Eugene O'Neill's diary entry for the three-day trip reads simply: 21 To Paris (Hotel du Rhin)22 Paris (Hotel du Rhin)Carlotta & I are married! (Mairie 1er Arrondissement)23 Back to “Le Plessis” (WD, 1.72) And within a day, he was back at work on Mourning Becomes Electra.On July 24, 1929, at Le Plessis, Carlotta noted that the New York Herald had reported the marriage in Paris. “Now that we're safely married,” she wrote, “Gene can forget all that and get down to serious work. That is what I want, too.”38 Indeed, O'Neill had turned a corner in his writing when he joined with Carlotta and journeyed abroad. By abandoning a former life that included Agnes Boulton and their children, Shane and Oona, and venturing to Europe, Asia, and eventually settling in France, he rededicated his life to his work. In a letter to Weinberger from Cap D'Ail, over two months before the wedding and a few weeks before their move to Le Plessis, O'Neill remarked: I have a new consideration of my life as an artist—as is proper at forty—and a new, more reasonably thought out scheme for doing “better and bigger” things in future. Europe has given me a new angle on what an artists [sic] life should be if he is to get the best out of himself, and the old commercial theatre in New York seems pretty unimportant in comparison.39 O'Neill in this letter states that he has no plans for a production in the coming year or the year after: “I'm sick of the whole ‘show-shop’ game.”40Akin to the Beatles in 1966 resolving to step away from performance and to head into the studio and to focus all their artistic efforts there, O'Neill resolved to stay away from productions and head into his own studio, the turreted garret at Le Plessis—and just write.Flash forward seven years: O'Neill is in the same place in terms of his views on the New York theatre scene and in his resolve to write his way through his frustration and disappointment. In a letter to his old friend and collaborator Kenneth Macgowan on November 15, 1936, from his rental home in Seattle, O'Neill wrote: I often dream of what a grand break it would be if you and Bobby [Robert Edmond Jones] and I could get together again, and start again in New York on our own with a resurge of the old spirit to prompt us. I don't notice much of that spirit in the present New York the